As if it wasn’t already obvious after the countless themed releases, this 2021 is confirmed once again the year of the loops with the arrival of the recent Aeon Drive, an independent Action-Platform, which struck us in this review site, net of some perplexities. In fact, we are talking about a product that will delight people speedrunner thanks to time travel and racing at breakneck speed for complex and well-structured levels, creating an experience that does its duty, but that may not please everyone.
A desperate race against time
Despite the description present on digital stores for Aeon Drive I very much focus on praising the game for the cyberpunk setting from New Barcelona, this is in truth only a side the events, among other things not too inspired. The small story of the title is instead focused above all and almost exclusively on the aforementioned concept of time loop, with the bland narration that kicks off after a hyper-light journey, with the young protagonist of the story Jackelyne who finds himself isolated with his ship falling towards the surface of a planet in another dimension, when suddenly he is captured by the robotic forces of the sci-fi city of New Barcelona. Unfortunately, the spacecraft – which has since crashed – is also about to have a critical reaction to the hyper-light engine that will merge in just 30 seconds. Hence, the ship’s AI finds a way to postpone the inevitable: try to steal a few seconds from other dimensions to ward off a catastrophic explosion. The game story then takes this thought-provoking opening, even though it was primarily made up for serve as the basis for the gameplay.
30 seconds to live or die
The gameplay of Aeon drive it has therefore proved to be quite interesting thanks to the constant use of the aforementioned time loops in small levels platform of discrete complexity. To survive and continue on our journey of countless internships, however, we will need to use all the resources at our disposal as the countdown towards the end of the world is always present over our heads and flows inexorably. To increase our chances of completing the mission in time, two fundamental mechanics of the title arrive in the field, one which is that of energy cells scattered around the levels that serve to gain additional seconds to add to the base 30, and the other is the lama for the “Teleportation”. The first component, that of the energy cells, consists in finding and accumulating these resources scattered around the game world and which recharge the battery of the machine for time loops. This device allows the protagonist to earn 5 precious seconds always stolen from other dimensions for use, and are very often necessary to continue within the same levels and above all to be able to obtain the various collectibles.
The teleportation blade, on the other hand, is a fairly controversial component, because despite being able to offer a enormous degree of challenge and satisfaction once fully understood, at the same time it is not very intuitive to use. We explain better: the concept of this gadget is very simple, you throw the blade to do translate the protagonist in the point where it is stuck instantly, thus guaranteeing 360 degree displacements with exceptional speed. Obviously the system is of great importance in a game where each single stage takes about 30 seconds to complete. The playful possibilities offered by this object for translation therefore guarantee the gameplay one unexpected depth for an independent title, with a playful component that requires extreme speed, skill and a lot of experience to be fully understood.
When we talk about gameplay depth, we mostly mean the complexity of the level design game that allows the more skilled players to take advantage of the setting and the skills in their possession to improve performance and times beyond all limits. One of the main components in this title is indeed a ranking system which shows in how many seconds the other players in the world have completed a certain stage and therefore pushes the user to do better, replaying a certain level over and over again. It goes without saying that, as happens in games with a sufficiently high learning curve, there are already players who have reached absurd goals, with completion times that come to be almost unthinkable (at least for us). This is thanks and above all for the use of the aforementioned translation blade which gives the most skilled players a fundamental tool for completing intricate stages in just one ten seconds, thanks to quick changes of direction and heart-pounding precision movements.
However, we have defined this mechanic as relatively controversial, because it is not very easy to use and decidedly not very intuitive both with the controller and above all with the keyboard. Often in fact the blade can go to stick in unexpected places or go back right in the middle of a jump resulting in our departure. As a result, while not a clear flaw, we believe the title would have benefited considerably from one greater intuitiveness in the commands of such mechanics with maybe a “Tracking effect” greater than the blow only on very large holds in all directions.
In this way the completion of the game sections would be less stressful when trying to take advantage of the verticality of the environments. This component could be inserted, perhaps even with the function to be able to disable it from the options menu so as not to excessively spoil the challenge to the most skilled players who need greater precision. There is also a local and online multiplayer that allows various players to play in cooperative or competitive, to get all the game collectibles as quickly as possible, thanks to the screen that expands and follows the movements of all the players at the same time, or to beat the time of the other companions.
A simple Cyberpunk background
From a technical point of viewor, the project of the boys of 2Awesome Studio defends itself pretty well thanks to one pixel art graphics which definitely does its job, with no problems whatsoever. What made us partially turn up our noses is the presence of a artistic sector yes interesting, but forgettable on several fronts. In fact, the cyberpunk element is exclusively a background to game actions and sometimes even clashes with some stylistic choices that are out of context. First of all the spasmodic revival of the classics medieval spikes that we are used to seeing in thousands of Platforms, but which in our view have a very limited sense in a super advanced world like that of New Barcelona. Fortunately, there are also other good formulas like robotic enemies and the many laser grids to get through with the blade. But we are not talking about a contextualization so well defined that it can rival other types of products of similar scope.
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